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Meadowbank boasts of a good year

DENISE RIDEOUT

The Meadowbank gold project, located north of Baker Lake, was a shimmering success in 2002, says its owner, Cumberland Resources Ltd.

The mining company found a new deposit of gold this November at Meadowbank, which is 70 kilometres north of Baker Lake. The deposit, which the company has named "PDF", is its sixth gold find in the area.

"That was the feather in the cap for the year," Kerry Curtis, Cumberland Resources’ interim president, said in an interview.

The mining company discovered the PDF gold resource during this year’s field season, in which it spent $6.5 million on drilling and excavation work. About 30 people from Baker Lake and the Kivalliq region worked at Meadowbank between April and October.

"We had a very big and productive season out at Meadowbank," Curtis said.

In October, a month before discovering PDF, Cumberland Resources announced it would begin a feasibility study on the Meadowbank project.

It’s the final stage of a gold project, and will determine if it’s feasible for the company to take the next step and build a mine.

"Not very many gold projects make it to this stage, so we’re pretty happy to have a project that we think can make it," Curtis said.

Meadowbank is the third largest undeveloped gold resource in Canada, with three million ounces of gold reserves, most of it lying just 150 metres under the tundra.

The feasibility study, which is expected to take between 11 and 15 months to complete, will include detailed diagrams of every nook and cranny of the proposed mine site.

"It’s really a process of looking at the project as a whole, the economics of the project, the capital costs, the operating costs and doing what we call a final mine design," Curtis said.

The economic results in the report will then help the company in its search for more financial backing for the gold project.

Next year, Cumberland Resources will do more drilling around the area where the PDF deposit was discovered.

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